Description: The Best Ever! explores the tradition of parades as enacted in the small cities and towns of New England, events that at once celebrated the skeleton of the American Story and amplified both the distinctive regional and the broader national cultures. Copublished with Old Sturbridge Village.
Brief description:
Jane C. Nylander is president emerita of Historic New England. Formerly director of Strawbery Banke Museum, curator of textiles and ceramics at Old Sturbridge Village, and curator of the New Hampshire Historical Society, she has served as Trustee of Old Sturbridge Village, Historic Deerfield, the New Hampshire Historical Society, the Decorative Arts Trust, the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in New Hampshire, the Worcester (Massachusetts) Historical Museum, and the Costume Society of America. She has written and lectured extensively on New England social history and domestic interiors, textiles, clothing, and antiquarianism. Winner of many awards and widely published in periodicals including Antiques, Antiques and Fine Arts, and Early American Life, she is also the author of Our Own Snug Fireside: Images of the New England Home, 1760-1860 (Knopf, 1993), Fabrics for Historic Buildings (National Trust, 4th edition, 1990) and Windows on the Past: Four Centuries of New England Homes (Historic New England, 2009). A special pleasure throughout her career has been extensive research in New England's local historical societies and town libraries. Winner of many awards, Jane Nylander credits her husband and collaborator, Richard, for enriching her work.